Incidental Specimens_Endurance_2007

“…we still perceive the world, in all its gushing beauty and terror, right on our pulses. Diane Ackerman

Incidental Specimens is a series of works as varied in artistic approaches and media, including photography, video stills, and digital manipulation, incorporating wax and rubber, naturally found objects, discarded debris and thin paper references of skin combined with metal, thin wires and threads of nerve connections, as they are in examples of sensory response. I often have difficulty defining these works with precise words, trying to verbalize the source of their incubation, which comes a deeply personal space. The works are offered as specimens of the human process.

Diane Ackerman writing in A Natural History of the Senses states that “The senses don’t just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into meaningful patterns.”

The more recent works in the series are based on this notion of sensory input and evidentiary verification – the human patterns of life. However, adding the human dimension to any test or experiment allows for varying data and measurements that do not neatly answer the questions.